2 out of 5

I was wondering what would become of ol’ Baltimore after the conclusion of his vampire hunt.  Apparently it would be a lazy attempt to spin off an ‘early adventures of Baltimore’ series, featuring our lead stripped of his stoic personality and drive and thus interchangeable with any other character.  Now, I realize that we’ve had a handful of mini-series comprising 20ish issues of Balty up to this point, and that some of those minis were diversions while on the hunt – stop here, kill some ghosts, move on – and, yeah, some truly felt like diversions.  But we were often saddled with incredibly moody artists, few side characters, and an omnipresent dour outlook from our lead which gave the title its own unique character.

Our artist this go-round, Peter Bergting, is one of the Mignolaverse’s new recruits, and his style will, I’m sure, fall more and more in line with the house style soon enough, but for now, his linework is almost a little too basic to sell the vibe.  I do like the look – he reminds me of Steve Yeowell, but with a less studied sense of layout- Bergtig’s figures are very often walking away from us while talking or pushed to the edges of the frame, and it really put me very far outside of the moment, distanced by the POV.  To counter Pete’s more basic pencils, our regular colorist (and pro) Dave Stewart drops a ton of shades and matches the basicness… which, unfortunately, distills the shadows and mood.  ‘Witch of Harju’ just has a gray-tinged palette; it’s not particularly dark or dingy lookin’ like I likes it.

The tale does follow the mold of stumbling across an evil and stopping that evil, only we’re at a point where Baltimore has several compatriots with him.  I’m not 100% on my timeline, but it does sound like, from the dialogue, there’s already a plan to go after a (the?) vampire leader, but it just feels like an afterthought here and not the driving force of the book.  And because there’s more dialogue, that means Mr. Golden gets to go to town, which means, uh, cheesy dialogue.

It’s a disappointingly generic book, and I’m hoping it’s not the spin-off attempt (or gateway to an ongoing…) I fear it is.